Two men attacked and stabbed a nine-year-old girl of mixed Russian and African heritage in St. Petersburg, seriously injuring her in an apparent xenophobic attack, officials said Sunday.

The Saturday evening attack took place in an apartment building hallway and was the latest incident targeting foreigners or minorities in Russia's second-largest city.

Aliu Tunkara, who heads a civic group for Africans in St. Petersburg, said the girl was returning home after a walk and had just entered the building when two men stabbed her.

Alexander Klaus, an investigator with the city prosecutor's office, said in televised comments that during the attack nothing was stolen from the girl, whose father is from Mali and whose mother is Russian. He said the girl had been hospitalized in satisfactory condition.

"The attack has caused a strong public reaction and is being investigated under charges of hooliganism and attempted murder," City Prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said in televised comments. "We are considering xenophobia as a motive."

The incident came just days after a St. Petersburg jury acquitted a teenager of fatally stabbing a nine-year-old Tajik girl two years ago. That killing drew wide public attention, provoking protests from Tajikistan and underscoring an increase in hate crimes in Russia's major cities.

Tunkara said he thought Saturday's attack was connected to the jury decision.

"Since nobody was punished for the murder of the girl, people with similar nationalist attitudes could now feel that they have nothing to fear in committing such actions," he said.

My recollection from the old Soviet days was that the Russians made noises about solidarity with oppressed black folks in Africa, brought them to Moscow for training in communism -- and then treated them like dirt.

The biggest news in that article is flabbergasting - they ACQUITTED the teenager who killed that poor Tadjik girl (I guess I should say "allegedly" - not). Unbelievable.

St. Pete has some definite skinhead/rascist problems. They also have a heckuva lot more emigrants and gypsies than Moscow has. If you walk up Nevskyj Prospekt at night you're encountered by skinheads AND gypsies (not together of course). I was in St. Petersburg a few years back with a TVA scientist (he's black). We were at the train station and this drunk guy came up and yelled some epithats and kicked his suitcase. What the drunk didn't know is we had a couple of Russian navy officers with us. Boy was he sorry.... nothing like a butt kicking AND an arrest.

Probably. But at the time her father was in-country, there probably were very very few people of non-Russian, non-Asia-European descent there. I wish I could find that old Ebony/Jet Magazine article about Blacks and Bi-racials who lived in Russia. As near as I remember, it was a mixed experience (this article was from the time before the collapse of the USSR). On the one hand, Russians are fascinated by and attracted to Black people; but on the other hand, they somewhat despise them (kinda like the French).

Correct. Add to it that those brought-in foreigners were afforded privileged treatment [vs. regular guy-on-the street] which obviously added to the resentment. "Lumumba University of Friendship Between the Peoples" [the main institution these were organized in] was popularly known as "Lumumbarium".

Your'e not talking about the SAME Bill Cosby who is so edified on this board for telling low income blacks to stop blaming their failures on white racism,are you? End of sarcasm. Cosby gets a pass way too often from folks here.While admiring his success and talent,I smell a rat when he pops off.The sad truth is that many blacks who"make it"turn their noses up at "those people"in the hood whose behavior they fear will reflect badly on them through guilt by racial association. Then,of course,we have the "outside woman"and the out of wedlock Cosby child. I thought that stuff only happened to blacks from the projects!

like Pushkin. Culture can be separate from race -- for instance in the USA I firmly believe that only the first and maybe second generations of immigrants belong to the country of origin, the rest are Americans. Ditto for Russkies.

Cosby was a closet WHORE just like the great Dr.J.and Johnney Cochran led separate lives( with white women),fathered children, refused to take care of them; and somehow these bastards managed with the assistance of the MSM to discredit and smear these children and played the race card to the hilt. Money and position will buy you out of everything

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